Sedimentary features of tsunami backwash deposits in a shallow marine Miocene setting, Mejillones Peninsula, northern Chile

Notwithstanding the absence of soft-sediment deformation features, the marked facies change from a lower shoreface into an upper shoreface environment through the tsunamiites provides directional information about the origin of the tsunami wave. It was most likely produced by a sea floor fault displacement associated with an episode of sudden, probably coseismic coastal uplift.